


miles to go before I sleep

by ninemoons42



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Drinking to Cope, Female Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Introspection, My First Work in This Fandom, Post-Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Post-Wonder Woman (2017), Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 19:43:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11214975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: How do you let go of grief, and how do you hold on to love and the memory thereof?Years after leaving home, years after her great griefs, Diana Prince continues to make her way forward.





	miles to go before I sleep

**Author's Note:**

> I'll get around to writing that fix-it fic eventually maybe.
> 
> For now, angst, because Diana Prince gives me all the feels.

Clanging, clanging, echoes upon echoes reverberating in her skin and in her bones, in the tingling sinews that stubbornly knit her together, as she threw her shield and her sword down and her fingertips were numb and pricking all over, pins and needles, from the long hours of exertion and of training.

There was no one in this space with her and there never would be: she tended to frequent this place long after most mortals would have drunk their final nightcaps and stumbled into some bed -- their own, or someone else’s -- to sleep off the long evening hours and then at some unforeseen hour rise to begin the long daylight work once again. Never earlier than midnight by the cold impersonal red-glowing digits of the black clock hung on the farthest wall -- and she would never be easy until she had spent four hours, five hours, six, on her nightly exertions, like the prayers and the rituals that she had learned in her distant childhood. Never for her again the pealing rising solemn chant of praise to the gods and entreaties for their blessings and their guidance; never for her again the salutations and thanks at sunrise and at sunset. She could not go back, not with her work still left to be taken up again night after night, the work of protecting so many who would never know and perhaps would not care about her own labors.

So it was that she glanced at the clock and it was fourteen minutes past five in the morning. There remained only two or three hours before she would have to head to the Louvre once again. Was that budget meeting scheduled for today or for the morrow? She could not remember. She was not expecting to speak. She never did say any words at those gatherings. Only placed herself firmly in the background. Others who worked on antiquities as she did were far more persuasive as spokespersons and speakers, but even in the digitized here and now there were still many who would rise to their feet to fund the ongoing expansion and acquisition of the objects of the ancient worlds, and so -- there was no need for Diana Prince to exert herself there.

Only a need to choose an ensemble, nothing too chaste and nothing too scandalous either. Perhaps she would decline the invitations to dinner and to cocktails and to all other manner of assignations. The years went on and still she was sought-after, despite doing her best to fade into social obscurity. 

Perhaps she ought to ask Bruce Wayne to quit sending her so many party invitations.

Her heaving breaths and the constant tick of the watch that she carried everywhere with her, the tick of the minute hand that measured the quiet pulse of her heartbeat, continuing ever and anon and all the while the world was passing her and she was quiet, quiescent, and she did not want to fight. 

It was her watch now; it had long since become her watch. A one-of-a-kind watch, now, and so few left in the world who would have the expertise to repair it, should it break down -- but she could not bear to lock it away in a strongbox. She could not bear to part with that last memory; she could only hold on to it, and wear it, and hear it. Bear it, for the sake of her heart.

She wanted to save people, she wanted to save those who were distressed and those who were downtrodden, and if only that could be done without the need for martial actions. Without having to risk that final loss of that last piece of him. 

But how to silence the guns? How to extinguish the darkness in humankind without also extinguishing humankind itself? She didn’t know the answers to those questions. No one she knew could give her any form of answer -- not even her mother, still training, still working to keep Themyscira a myth and a hidden refuge.

And the gods who might have been her kin, her brothers and sisters, would only and ever persist in their silence.

She gulped thirstily at the two large bottles of water that she had brought along to her nightly exercises. Cool gentle slide down her throat, and never any form of solace in them. Better to uncork one or two or several bottles of that fine ruby-red kriek that she purchased from Beersel every year, and to think on the memory of her mother’s favorite cherries, so darkly red they were almost night-black. 

Diana closed her eyes, and took a long deep breath. She did not feel cleansed. She was only a little winded. There were no foes here. She was safe, and she would remain safe until she chose to charge into the dangerous world, until she chose the battlefield and the vantage point from which she would survey her opponents, emerging to disable them, to defeat them, to prevent further bloodshed or pain.

She was alone, but for the tick-tick-tick. Alone with the inexorable and unstoppable passage of time.

Yesterday: fifty years since Sameer had died. He had been the last of the team to stay on with her in the changing climes, through the heartbreak and the agony of the many, many wars that were still being fought all over the world after “the war to end all wars”. He had returned to Northern Africa and he had found himself not only acting in some fine plays, but also creating them -- and he had been writing the story of a woman who wore a mourning veil and carried a great and magical sword all the way until he was laid out onto what would become his deathbed.

That manuscript was still in Diana’s keeping, safely preserved, so that she could still see the last words on the last page. See them in Sameer’s steady but cramped hand, unspooling across the full width of the sheet, as though he had only laid down his pen yesterday. The main character had been speaking of the darkness in the hearts of men and of women. Had prayed to any who would hear her, that she would remain strong and vigilant and kind.

“Who would answer that kind of prayer?” she had asked, in those final hours.

“Do you know, I can’t imagine,” Sameer had whispered, still struggling to muster up a smile for her sake, even as his breaths began to draw themselves out into hoarse falling rattles.

Some day, she’d consent to let that story go, to see it finished, and perhaps brought to life on the stage, a fitting tribute to the last of her brothers in battle to fall.

Oh, how her heart hurt: for the anniversary of Sameer’s passing was only the opening of the season of her mourning and her remembrance. Sameer had died in June, and then the others, too, had gone away to their long long rest, to their homes in her memories: Etta in August. Chief in September and Charlie in October, their deaths taking place ten days and seven years apart. 

And in November, when everyone else seemed to be preparing for the feasts that marked the end of a year and the beginning of another: Antiope, and Steve.

Diana washed the grime and the sweat from her hair and from her trembling hands, and tied on her dressing-gown: but she did not seek her bed. There were still things to do, before she had to head out into the day once more.

And here was a bottle of kriek. One for her to open, and a handful more that would stay sealed, for there was no one here to drink the toast with her, and there was no one here to share their memories with her.

The toast that she murmured into the dying night had had a long and storied history, or so Charlie had always claimed.

“Here’s tae us,” she murmured.

Soft pop as she uncorked the bottle that she’d placed on the table. 

No one to respond, in that traditional almost-belligerent lilt: “Wha’s like us?”

Around her kitchen table, the empty chairs and the full bottles, and the ghosts of those whom she had loved and lost.

She drank all the rest of the kriek in one cherry-scented swallow. Soft foam fizzing at the corners of her mouth when she finished off the toast: “Damn few -- and they’re a’ deid!”

It wasn’t Charlie’s accent at all and she knew it: she’d said it as she would have, had she been toasting her sisters-at-arms, with the veil lying just beyond the shores of the island that they called home.

No one here, at last, to remark on her tears when they began to fall.

She wrapped her arms around herself. Not the weight of her bracers that made her movements slow and sad: she wasn’t even wearing them. She didn’t wear them in these hours. 

No, she was carrying something much, much heavier. Grief. Sorrow. Loneliness.

Memory was the millstone that she bore on her back: memory, sharp as an Amazon-forged sword, piercing her mind and her heart.

The years could not dull that ache that welled up at the corners of her eyes, the desperate longing of her empty bed and her empty arms.

(Oh, certainly, she’d made much of Steve Trevor on that one single night, and he’d had his fill of her, again and again and still yearning for more: but the gilded sweetness of the weight of him in her arms, that was the more painful loss. His voice talking about what it was that mortals would do in times of peace. He had only ever had that faintest idea of what that peace would be: the days and nights of conflict and bloodshed had stripped away from him the illusion that he himself would be able to settle down, after all was said and done.

(And after all was said and done: he never had the chance to find out what it would be like to settle down.)

Her tears were bitter salt on her lips as they always were. Tears, and the fragrance of cherries. 

She sat at that empty table until the sun began to slant cloudy golden bars of light onto the cool tiled floor, onto her unshod feet.

And she would have sat there until it was time, and past time, to head to the Louvre, if the morning silence hadn’t been broken by a quiet knock on her door.

The coils of her golden lasso, waiting on the table next to the door: coils that flared into bright warmth at her touch as though she were recognized and welcome, glowing their fierce promise and warning as she seized her doorknob and pulled -- 

The stoop was empty.

There was no one lying in wait for her.

Only the lilies. Graceful petals: some were touched with warm yellow, others with blushing pink. Sweet scent, but all was made somber by the wide black ribbon wrapped around the stems.

A crisp card tucked into the armful of flowers, and Diana knew the handwriting.

Knew the grief that still weighed her correspondent down.

_I know that remembering is hard, but it is all we have. Please call me, when you can spare a few minutes. Lois._

And when she was in her office, surrounded by the strange and familiar objects that she spent her days working on, she took a sheet of paper from the pine-burled box next to her tablet. A fountain pen that bore the marks of long and cherished use.

Wrote back.

_A friend of mine was trying to write a play before he passed, and he borrowed some of the words I’d learned in my youth to use in a speech: words of great love, and of great sorrow. Of clinging to the first and of letting out the second. And that those actions should never be made to exchange places. What a poor world it would be indeed if we let out the love that we’ve known, and cling to the grief that we carry. Perhaps someday you and I will be able to let our great griefs slip away. Until then I am your friend -- until then, and even after, I will be one who understands. Diana._

And the round on which her hands moved, to begin and end her days at this desk. The end of her lasso, never fraying no matter how she used it, never falling apart; and then the lined glass of the watch on her wrist; and finally: the photograph, captive in its preserving glass and gas.

The sword that had not been the one she left Themyscira with, waiting in its scabbard, vigilant, as she always was.

She folded the letter, sealed it into an envelope.

Brushed her fingertip across the one single lily she’d taken to the Louvre.

Rose to her feet to begin again.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
